Waypoints by Adam Ouston

Author:Adam Ouston
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781919639857
Publisher: Splice
Published: 2022-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

David Wynford Carnegie

Indeed newly-discovered it was, for on 17 September 1892 the prospector Arthur Wellesley Bayley had received a reward lease of twenty acres after discovering some five hundred-odd ounces of gold at a place they called Fly Flat (anyone who has visited in the summer will know how the place got its name, which was another reason why my entering the cool, black mine-shaft was such a relief), a discovery that precipitated a mad rush, arguably the biggest in the nation’s history, out to the area that was quickly renamed Coolgardie by the warden, Finnerty, and summarily opened (again by Finnerty) on 20 September—astounding how quickly bureaucracies can function when there are riches to be had!—and thus, not even off the boat, the two English gentlemen were caught up in the buzz that swept through the port at King George’s Sound and north to Perth, out to Southern Cross and further east to Fly Flat, aka Coolgardie. Despite their pedigree, the pair was rather short of money on arrival and were, especially after getting word of the find at Fly Flat, keen to try their collective hand at prospecting, for not only were there riches to be had in the “land of Ophir,” but this adventure was far more exciting than picking tea on a plantation in Ceylon, which although exotic and distant was also completely known; the even-more-distant brown land that now spread out before them was perfect for a handsome, idle college dropout and his misfit (soon-to-be) Marquess midshipman mate to make their names, because this was terra nullius, the next-best thing to exploring on the moon, which is to say completely unknown; as they stepped off the steamer at King George’s Sound they were leaving behind what they knew of the world and themselves, leaving the gravity, the touchstone, of their rational, civilised, everyday lives onboard the ship and marching forth on their first real adventure, college boyishness still in their veins, into a world where what kept your feet on the ground was different to back home—different even to colonial Ceylon—in short, a world they did not understand, the Antipodes, one which, so they were led to believe, rewarded the spirit of adventure and discovery, which is practically all the two boys had brought with them. And so from King George’s Sound in Albany they set out for Perth, then from Perth to Southern Cross and from there on to Coolgardie riding the wave of diggers now migrating east, a journey that would give them a taste of prospecting before they’d even reached the plump goldfields, for such was the blinding heat of the sun and the dryness of the earth, that water became even more precious than gold, the landscape playing tricks with its rippled air that had them saying to themselves (often there was no strength left to say it to anyone else), “Just a little further,” which was the digger spirit, “Keep pushing”; what horrors they must have seen even before they

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